Prison Food
by cuddlesome
Summary: Kylo Ren goes to break up the scavenger's hunger strike. The affair does not end up being as impersonal as he anticipated. Now features a sequel.
1. Chapter 1

Kylo Ren glances at many days' worth of rations on the floor. One of the bowls had been kicked over, leaving the gray, sludgy contents splattered across the floor, but the others remained untouched. He wonders whether the scavenger upended the bowl herself or an exasperated stormtrooper had.

He pulls his hood down as he turns to look at where she stands in one corner like a trapped animal. "You have not been eating."

"I'll start eating," she says, "when my food stops being drugged."

The scavenger had been moved from the interrogation room to a cell over the course of the week she spent captured by the First Order. Kylo knew, somehow, that she would detect the drugs meant to make her more pliant to his mind reading, but he expected someone already on the brink of starvation to get desperate at some point. Clearly he had underestimated her willpower.

She was already far too scrawny to begin with. Now she is just painful to look at; all sharp angles, only bulging where her bones stand out. Her hands, already balled into fists, and her stance both make it clear she what expects this encounter to escalate to. The idea of her, half-starved and unarmed, thinking she is even capable of holding her own in a fight with him would be funny if it were not so sad.

"Relax, scavenger," he says, putting some suggestion of the Force behind it.

For a moment, she does, fists uncurling and a dazed expression coming over her face, before she shakes her head, grits her teeth, and faces him with even more determination. Her own erratic grasp on the Force rears up in retaliation against him. His fingers twitch at the clumsy but powerful barrage and not for the first time he is glad for his mask disguising his expression.

The scavenger attempts to compel him back with a Force-fueled command of her own. "You will stay away from me."

He starts to speak, only to be interrupted by a low growl. The scavenger wraps an arm around her middle and Kylo is reminded of his reason for being lowered to prison duty.

He could have her gavaged in the medical wing. He could have her restrained as he did when interrogating prisoners and feed her with a funnel. There are a hundred other methods he could have used to get her to eat. And yet he chooses perhaps the most impulsive and illogical of them all.

He picks up a bowl of rations himself. The sludge is full of so many preservatives he has no concerns about whether it is in the same state it was when it arrived in the room, minus the heated up nature to make it slightly more appetizing. The single spoon amongst the bowls he leaves alone, turning to approach the scavenger. She backs away from him, shaking her head all the while.

"I do not want to harm you, but I will do what I must," he warns.

"I have no such misgivings about you."

Kylo crowds her in the corner of the cell until she lashes out at him. The kidney punch stings, but her attempt to kick him in the groin does not connect after he lifts a knee to impede her attack. All of her movements have been made halting and sluggish by her starvation and doubtless an addition of exhaustion. Even the blows he does not bother blocking have little effect. Every pound of her fist against him is a hailstone against a castle.

The bowl in his hand has its contents slosh over the sides more than once, spattering his robes with gray and serving to thoroughly irritate him. He tosses it aside at some point, reasoning he can simply get one of the others later. It is only the fact that he is winning their little scuffle that keeps his temper in check. Had that not been the case, the scavenger might very well be in the state of most prisoners Kylo interacts with: bruised, bleeding, and more often than not missing a limb.

Simply standing there and taking it would belie his pride. Ever so slowly but ever so surely, he starts to wrestle her to the ground, pinning each flailing limb with the Force as he goes. What little weight she has went into lean muscle, strength she uses to fend him off. For a time, anyway. Eventually, inevitably, his greater size and pain tolerance gets the better of her. He cannot help the surge of satisfaction that comes with pinning her to the floor, careful not to put too much of his weight on top of her. Putting his knees on either side of her and hovering over her with a bow at the waist, he stares down at her mostly Force frozen body. Pathetic wriggles are all that are left to show the fight in her.

Her struggles cease when he reaches out to cup the side of her face. For a moment she looks like a rabbit faced with a stoat, wide-eyed and afraid as she stares at his eyeshade. He lowers his head to be closer to her face as he slides his thumb over her lips, imagining how the texture would feel without the barrier of his glove.

Then the moment is over. Her face turns from scared to angry in a millisecond. She turns to bite him, rewarded only with a mouthful of Kylo's glove and an unimpressed tilt of his helm. He forces his thumb between her back teeth, prising her mouth part of the way open. The scavenger bites down harder. He feels an incisor give him a slight pinch around his knuckle. A small irritant, but nothing more.

Gesturing behind him using his free hand, Kylo lifts up one of the bowls into midair with the Force and guides it to his hand. Dividing his attention between keeping the scavenger down and doing that gave her a little bit more freedom. Emphasis on "a little bit" since she only managed to paw weakly at one of his thighs instead of her presumed goal of grabbing at his wrist. Kylo's throat gets dry at that, but he shakes his head with a growl and resolves to ignore the touch.

With little pomp or ceremony, he pours the rations in the bowl into her wedged-open mouth. She gags when it hits the back of her throat. The angle she is at combined with him putting down the bowl to massage her throat pushes the sludge down, though she heaves all the way.

He should insist she is fed something richer, something that does not look like it got scraped off of a trooper's boots, but he knows it will only make her ill. An entire life of being fed cheap synthetic food will not let her body off easy. Perhaps he can ease her into a better diet after a time.

Kylo gives her a moment to recover from the first draughts before lifting the bowl back up again to give her more. The pace at which he pours the thick, bland substance into her mouth causes her to have to swallow at a quick rate; Kylo takes satisfaction in every gulp. She makes little noises of distress, too, coughs and whimpers both.

"Shhh," he soothes, his shushing comes out in a gravelly rasp through his voice scrambler. "You need to eat, scavenger. Stop fighting me."

Her fingers claw at his thigh. He can feel humiliation coming off of her formless thoughts in waves, making him feel equal parts triumphant and ashamed. Before he can give more thought to the latter sensation, he pulls one of the other bowls to his hand and feeds her more of the rations.

During one of the breathers he gives her, she repeatedly swallows and appears to roll her tongue around her mouth in an attempt to dispel the taste of the rations.

Kylo shakes his head and says, "It would taste better if you had eaten it warm." Not by much, but somewhat.

The scavenger scowls at him, clearly not thinking much of the prisoner rations, warm or cold.

Absurdly, he is reminded of his—of Ben Solo's mother. Ben had been a picky child, making her job cut out for her at every turn. Still, she managed to coerce him to choke down whatever it was she wanted him to eat with her unique brand of firm, no-nonsense persuasion. Upon reflection, Kylo has to wonder whether or not she had ever used the Force, subconsciously or not, over something as trivial as getting Ben to get proper nutrition. She had certainly never wrestled him to the floor, though.

Something inside of Kylo aches with even passing thoughts of Ben's childhood, and he banishes those thoughts from his mind in favor of returning to feeding the scavenger. He takes his hand away from her throat, confident that she will start swallowing on her own from now on, and moves it farther down to rest on her stomach. Even with gravity pressing down on it, there is a slight lump. Given the tininess of her starved stomach, she is close to filled up by Kylo's estimation. He is careful not to put any pressure on it, wary of making her vomit after spending so much time getting her to eat.

As he pours the last dregs of the second portion out, a bit dribbles out of the corner of her mouth, yet another testament to her difficulty swallowing so much at once. Without much thought, he pulls his thumb out of her mouth to wipe away the drip with the back of his hand.

The scavenger's eyes widen, then narrow suspiciously. She stares searchingly at his mask. He is unsure what it is she is looking for, even with a calculating graze against her mind. Again, he has to remind himself to focus.

Kylo straightens up, shifting his knees on either side of her so they do not clamp down as much. "Now, are you going to eat the rest yourself once I leave or should I feed all of them to you this way?"

"I can't possibly eat all of that," she rebukes, then adds, "but I'll eat one more if you do."

Point-blank, he scoffs and tells her no. He has his far more appetizing and undrugged dinner waiting for him back in his rooms, for one thing, and for another, far more prominently, he does not dare make himself vulnerable to her again.

Her head lolls suddenly, then is dragged back up with some effort. "Fine, I'll eat two bowls if you eat just one."

He starts to pull another bowl to him with the Force as he sets the emptied one beside the first. "You are in no position to be bargaining."

"Is it really so wrong," she says, voice slurring, "that I want to see your face again?"

Kylo drops the bowl out of the air just before it reaches his hand, spattering it on her right hip and one of his knees. The cold slop seeps through the leg of his pants. He does not notice, too wrapped up in scrutinizing her expression. The scavenger stares back at him, chin lifted, but eyes becoming muzzy. She blinks, head bobbing down, then blinks again.

The all-too-familiar haze of anger starts to gather in the back of his mind. "You should know better than to lie to me, scavenger."

One of his hands comes to rest next to her head, fingers outstretched but not quite touching. In his haste to check her thoughts, his grasp on the rest of her shatters, made apparent by a full-body shudder. Oddly, she does not take advantage of her new freedom right away. She does not fight against his mind probe, either. Where the scavenger had been all fight before, she is strangely docile now. There is a new fuzziness around the edges of her thoughts that confuses him until he realizes the cause and feels quite stupid. It is, of course, the drugs. The drugs in her food that she spent so long avoiding. He had given her two portions meant to be ingested over the course of two days both at once and it took immediate effect.

Kylo's anger dissipates as quickly as it had come and he is left to examine her thoughts concerning him. There is plenty to see: no small amount of hatred, suspicion, and a healthy dose of fear. But beneath it all is a thread of interest.

The scavenger is… genuinely interested in him.

In spite of himself, warmth blooms in the pit of his stomach. He backs out of her mind, so to speak, and looks down at her motionless body.

She has become completely unconscious at this point, not the preferable state for something as intimate as mind invasion. Kylo's methods could involve sinking his figurative claws in and ripping information out, but that often meant leaving the mind on the receiving end in pieces. Even malleable like this, she would surely suffer ill effects if he forcibly extracted the information about Luke Skywalker. He could not do that if he wished to train her, and he does; so, so badly. He needs her trust, needs her to have her mind at least somewhat open to him.

Kylo shifts his kneeling position to one side of the scavenger and lifts her up in his arms, cradling her skinny form to his chest. So tiny. He could crush her with a mere thought. He lays her down on the bed and, after a moment spent watching her caved in chest rise and fall, covers her up with the thin blanket that had been kicked to the floor.

Though he cannot bring himself to dig deeply enough for the information the First Order and the Supreme Leader want, he permits himself a cursory look through the fog of her drug-induced sleep to look for something very important to him. He tugs it gently from her mind.

Rey. Her name is Rey. He does not speak it aloud for fear of his helmet ruining the sound.

Kylo leaves the remaining couple bowls of rations in the room, though he almost hopes Rey will continue to fast. It will give him a reason to visit and feed her again.


	2. Chapter 2

When Kylo enters Rey's cell again, it is only his Force sensitivity that allows him to dodge the bowl lobbed at his head. The projectile would have bounced off harmlessly off of his helmet had it connected, but he would not relish getting the gruel off of himself. Instead it hits the frame of the door and then drops to the floor with a clatter and a wet slap of the contents. Kylo shakes his head. One more bowl of rations spilled in this room that Rey had not eaten. Still, from what he had heard from the guards' reports, she had started eating again with the advent of them offering her undrugged food. She even managed to keep from throwing it back up in the toilet in her cell. Probably in the hopes of not hearing from him anymore. Too bad for her, though. He is here today to reintroduce her to solid food.

Kylo had sent in stormtroopers to clean up the mess from the other spillage from their last encounter. They were also tasked with the job of stripping Rey of her old clothes and bathing her just before he arrived. He noticed in their close quarters last time just how filthy she looked, though his mask spared him from the no doubt equally reprehensible smell.

She stares at him, eyes full of contempt, from where she sits in bed with the thin blanket wrapped around her. The stormtroopers cleaned her up very meticulously, from what little he could see of her exposed arms, upper chest, and head where her blanket does not cover. Her skin is shiny and pink, evidence of a thorough scrubbing. In addition, the three greasy buns are gone. The troopers had washed, brushed, and presumably dried her hair until it shone like a polished chestnut. All the better to make her more presentable to Kylo Ren. Still, Kylo has trouble disassociating the hair buns from his mental image of her; her hair hangs past her shoulders when it is down, further than he expected. He has the most irrational wish to take his gloves off and run his fingers through it. He could, if he wanted. The rules while handling prisoners are lifted from him. Once someone can get inside their victims' heads and lay waste to their minds, physical harassment pales in comparison.

He spares Rey of his fanatical sentiments for now, though. He has business to attend to. The meal he has for her is tucked in a nondescript bag he had tied to his belt. It is nothing extravagant, just some leftovers from the mess hall, but everything looks better after the slop that served as prison rations.

She stays huddled in the bed, not springing up with the intent to fight him like last time.

Even so, she bites out, "Keep away."

Kylo grows suspicious. Had she managed to get a weapon and when the troopers came to clean up that she now concealed from him? He skulks nearer. Rey finally gets out of the bed and draws the blanket further around herself, biting off warnings for him to stay away in higher intensity as he gets closer and closer, cornering her once more. Her mind is oozing with thoughts of keeping hidden. What is it she has to hide? He closes the distance altogether and rips the blanket from her with a snarl.

Rey gasps, then bares her teeth in a snarl of her own. For a long moment, Kylo stands stagnant with the blanket dangling from his fist. The stormtroopers had obeyed his orders to strip and bathe her, yes, but they had neglected to clothe her again. Rey clamps one arm around her chest and the hand on the opposite arm to her sex while she glares acidly at him.

He gets an eyeful of tanned skin, birdlike delicateness thanks to Rey's recent brush with undernourishment, and the rangy muscle that had not completely wasted away under that abuse. Kylo's ears and cheeks burn. The muddled combination of embarrassment and lust is surreal. Mixed in with his mental state is the main feeling pouring off of Rey: resentment, which he understands all too well.

Kylo turns his back to her, uncaring that he is leaving himself vulnerable to attack. It would not do to violate her trust any further than he already has.

He untwists his capelet from around his neck with his free hand. Despite its shredded nature and tears, there is a substantial amount of cloth to wind over and over around his wide shoulders, more than enough to cover her. He holds the capelet out to her, still facing away.

There is a short pause, then: "I don't want any of your reeking clothes."

Too late he remembers every article of clothing he owns stink of ashes and electrical burns and sweat, leaving them unenticing at best. Notwithstanding, he does not retract his substitute covering, nor does he even consider leaving.

"It will keep you much warmer and better covered than this." He shakes out the blanket.

"Stop it," Rey says, voice hard but brittle. "You may have a human face under there, but you're still a creature. Stop pretending otherwise."

Anger, his best enemy and his most hated friend, makes him start to tense.

Kylo fists the material in both of his hands, growling, "If you would prefer to be naked, that is your mistake to make."

Rey puts a hand on the arm holding the capelet. Kylo's head twitches as he turns to look back at her. When had she gotten so close?

Her hand does not even begin to fit around the swell of his bicep, especially bulging with tension as it is. Rey looks down at the point of contact as if she is surprised to find her hand there, too, but then she sets her jaw and looks back up to gaze at his helmet.

"Give it here," she instructs, indicating his capelet with a jerk of her chin.

She removes her hand from his arm and reaches around to take the capelet. He drops the blanket to the floor, then waits what he believes to be a fair amount of time after hearing the shifting of cloth against skin stop before turning to face her.

Rey has twisted the capelet around her body as one would dress a wound with a bandage, tucking the loose ends in at the top. Kylo spends a moment enjoying the sight of her wearing something of his. Any remaining traces of his anger dissipate as he takes in the sight of her still-exposed thin arms and legs.

Her mind is still sealed up tight as she can make it.

After a moment of thought and a longer moment of hesitation, he reaches up and presses the unlocking mechanisms on the sides of his helmet. He half expects her to take advantage of the moment of vulnerability, kicking his legs out from under him while he takes off the heavy helmet, but she does no such thing. He lets it drop to the floor with a clunk, knowing the durasteel will live up to its name and keep any real damage from coming to it.

Rey looks at his face with more or less the same poorly disguised curiosity she had the first time he showed her. Under her scrutiny, Kylo gives her a crooked smile he knows that Ben inherited from Han Solo and he hates himself for it.

Finally, Rey breaks the silence and starts to ask why he took his helmet off.

He does not answer. She starts to ask something more, then trails off. She should know. She had said that she wanted to see his face the last time, even in a drug-induced stupor from her food.

Kylo grimaces. Here he had been concerned about her state of undress that he entirely forgot his duty to feed her.

He walks forward to sit down on the bed, tries to ignore the way Rey flinches at the momentary closeness between them, and pulls out the leftovers from the bag at his hip. He had lifted the typical diet for the stormtroopers: bland meat imported from a nearby moon, a loaf of mealbread, and a small canister of numian cream. It is simple and in small portions, but more than enough to suit his needs.

Rey watches as he unpacks the food. "If you expect me to eat that, I want insurance it's not drugged."

Kylo takes a bite of the meat, chews, and swallows in short order, wondering all the while whether or not her stomach is knotted up in pain watching him eat. He does the same with a chunk of bread, groaning at the taste—which is, in truth, subpar at best—just to spite her. After slipping off his right glove, he gets a glob of numian cream on his pointer and middle finger. The look on her face as he licks it up with deliberate slowness makes the chalky taste worth it. He slides both fingers into his mouth to get off the last of the cream, sucks obscenely, then retracts them with a pop.

"Satisfied?" Kylo swipes his tongue across his plump lower lip for good measure.

Her unsteady connection to the Force nudges inquisitively at his mind like a child poking a half-dead, rabid body with a stick. She still does not believe the food is safe. He shoves back, assuring her his mind is quite sober, and savors her wince.

Still Rey questions him, suggesting that he built up a tolerance for the drugs in the food. Tsking, Kylo breaks off another piece of the mealbread and holds it out to her.

Is it really so hard to have a little faith? He had never lied to her, not once.

Rey falters, looking torn, but ultimately reaches out to take the bread. She chews it up with a look of bliss that Kylo hardly feels is warranted for such insipid food.

Kylo does not extend his arm for the second piece, instead keeping it very close. She squints at him. He is debating on whether or not to simply drag her to him with the Force when she finally edges forward. The position of sitting hunched over on the bed makes him appear to be beneath her, which in turn seems to make her more confident. His face is on level with her belly, the loose folds of his capelet disguising how sunken in it is… but only just.

Rey grabs the second piece of bread and eats it. Before she can back a safe distance away again, Kylo reaches out to touch her hipbone. It sticks out like a broken piece of machinery. Rey swats his hand away as if burned. He offers her the whole loaf of mealbread as consolation for her discomfort. Rey snatches it away and goes to the opposite end of the room where she sits down, never once taking her eyes off of him. She eats voraciously, sinking her teeth in with gusto and gulping down unchewed bites with noises Kylo can hear from across the room. He threatens to take it away from her if she does not slow down. He does not warn her about getting the pace making her sick, though. No doubt she already knows.

When Rey finishes off the bread, he is looming over her with the meat and numian cream in hand, swathing her in his massive shadow.

"I'm full," she says as she stands.

There is plenty of room left. Kylo knows this for certain as he probes her abdomen with his free hand, uncaring that she sinks her nails into his wrist through his pleated sleeve a moment later.

Kylo takes a step forward, backing her into the wall. Rey lets go of his wrist in favor of shoving against his chest. Disappointed as he is to not be flush against her body, Kylo finds he more than likes the feeling of her tiny, bony hands against the broad spread of his chest.

The strips of meat are room temperature at this point, but he covers them in numian cream and presses it to her lips all the same. Instead of wedging her mouth open again, he presses his thumb and pointer to either side of her jaw. From there it is a simple matter to slide the meat into her open mouth and release her long enough to chew. Kylo likes to think he does not force the food down her throat this time; it is something more akin to gentle coercion. Rey fights him every step of the way, beating at his torso with each mouthful of meat, but it seems more for show than anything else. She paces herself better than with the mealbread, presumably to irritate him but only managing to draw out the amount of time Kylo stays in close proximity to her.

As she eats, he gives a cursory examination of her mind. The shoddily constructed but thick mental walls hiding her secrets from before are still up, but he could slip between some of the cracks at this point. Just like her body, her mind still will not completely accept him, but she is more open than before. Hope bubbles in Kylo's guts, but he knows it is premature. Getting her to let them crumble completely will be the real challenge. Not wanting to attract her attention to his mindreading, he refocuses on the task at hand.

Kylo watches her start to eat out of his hand without him forcing her mouth open, though her pretend-struggle otherwise continues. Her lips and tongue brush his ungloved hand more than a few times, velvety and slimy. Her teeth only graze his fingers once in a nip that is almost like an afterthought after she finishes the last of the meat. On impulse, he returns her gesture with a quick connection of their mouths, half kiss and half bite. He takes a hold of her lower lip between his teeth for long enough to nibble and suckle it. Rey pulls back and looks at him in astonishment, not even mustering up the sense to hit him again. A mere half second later, all the mortification that comes along with kissing a prisoner and a scavenger and a would-be student set in.

Before Rey has an opportunity to so much as open her mouth, Kylo knocks her out with the Force. She crumples, limp, and he sweeps her into his arms. Kylo lays her down on her bed, feeling a sickening sense of déjà vu, and leaves the cell with the intention of finding the most expensive-looking piece of electrical equipment on the base so he can lay total waste to it.

Though the events had played out differently, even tenderly, at times, what had happened still amounted to a jailer feeding a prisoner and having dissolute feelings for her.


	3. Chapter 3

Kylo wishes Rey had bitten him back when he kissed her. Then he would have a mark, physical proof of the encounter. As he goes about his responsibilities on Starkiller Base, he runs his tongue and teeth over his ample lips to supplement his imaginings of Rey. He believes she would sooner crunch his lips and tongue into a pulp than truly kiss him anyway, so teeth come into play the most. The soft flesh on his mouth is puffy and peeling by now, but Kylo's mask effectively disguises the evidence of his newest obsessive habit. He becomes accustomed to the sensation of the dried out skin tearing and producing little bubbles of blood whenever he speaks.

What he cannot become accustomed to, however, is feeling Rey at the edge of his awareness. Her presence is a brilliant sun in the Force, diffusing warmth and light on a constant basis. It disgusts Kylo, though not as much as he disgusts himself. For, despite his vain attempts at the contrary, he wishes to embrace her light.

His own Force signature is a chilled miasma of gray, bordering on complete darkness but never quite the inky black that his helmet or garb would suggest. He feels her reach out and touch him through the Force a couple of times, not sinking deep as she had during his attempt to interrogate her. It is more of a slight poke than anything else, evidence of her testing out her powers. Even so, the heated mental touch makes him start longing. Kylo finds himself reaching back, though it takes little more than a slight caress from him before her presence retreats with a jerk. Each time she pulls away, he feels stung and angry at being continuously denied what he wants.

Hours of meditation, lightsaber training, and prayers to his grandfather do not dispel his sudden, horrible hunger. Kylo craves Rey's gutsy bravado, her wretched little body, and even the tiniest scrap of affection from her. More than that, though, he wants her to need him the same way. He crushes a datapad in his hands when he finally puts words to the sensations that have been haunting him. The glass shards are wet and slippery as he digs them out of his skin. If this is what attraction feels like, it is no wonder Han Solo and Leia Organa were always at each other's throats.

Kylo has never been self-possessed, so it only takes a few days for what little control he has over himself to snap. In Galactic Standard Time it is more or less the middle of the night when he decides he wants to see the cause of his depravity again.

Before he leaves, he takes out the clothes he had a service droid custom fit for Rey based on her rags from Jakku. It is nowhere near as dressy as he feels she deserves, an all-black affair made from scraps of stormtrooper body gloves. A bit like his own piecemeal clothing, really. He assumes she would not accept one of the uniforms from the female officers given the First Order regalia all over them. He hopes those feelings may change with time. As an afterthought, he takes some more stormtrooper rations from the kitchen as well as a couple of pieces of fruit. Feeding her has become something he associates with his visits to her and Kylo Ren is nothing if not a creature of habit. Another line of consideration has him taking a bit of the drugged gruel in a small container in case anything goes wrong.

The sound of Kylo's approach causes the stormtroopers on guard to snap to attention long before he gets to where they stand outside the detention block. He orders them not to disturb him before he heads to Rey's cell.

Kylo expected to find his capelet balled up in one of the corners of the room. To his surprise, she has added it to her bedding, ever practical. Rey is curled up in a tight ball, evidence of her habit of trying to keep the most heat while sleeping, with those bedclothes wrapped around her.

She jolts awake at the sound of him taking his helmet off.

"You," Rey says, looking angry and a bit sick.

"Me," Kylo replies, wondering if she will ever call him by his name if he tells her and how startled she would be if he called her by hers.

She gathers her covers more thoroughly around herself, glaring. Kylo leers back, but then resolves to at least pretend to focus on something else. He crouches to the floor, places his helmet on its side, and unpacks the food and clothes he had brought, arranging it in a haphazard stack. The last item he pulls out is a crowned fruit.

Rey, for her part, does not seem interested in any of it. "Why did you kiss me?"

"Are you so eager for me to do it again?"

Kylo hopes that an uncouth attempt at flirtation, proof of his parentage more than anything else, will disguise how he has no idea how to answer her question. It will suffice for now, based on the red creeping up Rey's neck and her livid silence as she looks away.

He draws a knife. Rey's gaze snaps back to him. Kylo bites his lip to keep from smiling, glad he had left his far more lethal lightsaber in his chambers. No telling how she would have reacted to that. There is a fleshy squish and a faint spray of juice as the knife cleaves through the fruit. Rey watches with suspicion as he tucks the knife into his belt, not taking her eyes off of it even as he busies himself with one half of the fruit. Kylo removes his gloves and curls the tips of his fingers into the insides, digging out some of the seeds. They shine like wet jewels in his palm. He brings them to his mouth as she watches.

Rey has lost interest in the knife for now and seems fixated on the sight of him eating. Whether she is hungry, trying to see if it is some kind of a trick again, or just likes to see his jaws working, he is not sure. Either way, he makes a show of it. As he did with the mealbread during his last visit, he makes more pleased noises than are necessary or appropriate. When he swallows, it is exaggerated as he can make it, the lump of his laryngeal prominence bobbing beneath his neck seal with harsh gulps.

He walks over as he licks the excess juice from his fingers. She recoils when he sits down next to her on the bed and looks away. Kylo crushes the fruit a little. He inhales and exhales slowly, attempting to rein in his temper. Never mind that that particular coping mechanism for anger he had learned from his uncle.

Kylo wraps a hand around her throat, bracing his forefinger and thumb at the back of her lower jaw to turn her face toward him. She stares at him with a contradictory spark of anger in her eyes and the dampness of unshed tears.

In a sudden he says—because he would rather rip out his own spinal cord than make her cry in earnest—"The First Order can take care of you. I can take care of you. You will never want again."

"I'm not some sort of pet," Rey says, voice remaining firm and steady, "I'd rather be half-dead on Jakku for fifteen more years than stay a single week with you and your so-called care."

She turns her head with a sharp jerk and snaps at his fingers, though there is little heart in the action. Kylo lets go, realizing he has treated her too harshly. He sees the bruises on her neck to prove it. Gentle, he needs to be more gentle and show her that he is capable of caring. He presses his mouth to the bruises and feels her pulse pounding, compounded shortly by a choked noise.

Kylo draws back, almost apologizing aloud, then, as if to belie that thought, kisses her neck again. This kiss, like the last one, had been done out of impulse, out of his refusal to do anything more than give brief indulgence to his desire to feel her with the sensitive skin on his lips. And it feels better than he could have hoped. Even with his lips ripped up as they are, he can appreciate the feeling of the velvety skin on her neck, kept safe from the majority of the sun and sand on Jakku that might have roughened it up. He licks a wide, wet stripe up her neck, right along her pulse, covering the fresh fingerprint-shaped bruises with his tongue. Teethmark-shaped bruises almost join them; he grazes his teeth along the side of her neck in preparation to bite down. One of his hands wanders up to where she has the blankets thoroughly wrapped around herself, tugging it down a little in an effort to see how much he can toe the line. The mere implication ends up being too much for Rey. She places both hands on his chest and shoves, succeeding in getting him to pull away. Shuddering, she rubs her palm over the place where he had kissed her, over and over, smearing away the glistening evidence of his saliva. All the same, she does not move away.

Again, he stops himself from apologizing proper for startling and disgusting her. He offers some seeds from the fruit by way of apology instead. When Rey reaches for them, he closes his fingers around them. She frowns, not grasping his intentions until he lifts his hand to her mouth and opens up his fist. This time, understanding appears on her face and something more flickers in her eyes. He has little time to decipher what it is before she grabs his wrist to keep it in place and lowers her head to his hand. She takes care to keep the bedclothes wrapped thoroughly around her, clutching them in place with her free hand.

The small mound of seeds is eaten in short order. When it starts to get interesting is when there are few enough of them that Kylo can feel her mouth on his hand. Lips brushing, teeth scraping, tongue lapping. All make his palm tingle and his excitement spike. After the seeds are gone, there is still some juice staining his hand. Rey attempts to lick it up, tickling him with her slippery tongue. The blot of red juice will not come out without a thorough scrubbing in the 'fresher, but he is not about to tell her that. After a bit, she moves on to smaller blotches on his fingers. She looks him straight in the eye when she takes his middle and forefinger into her mouth. Kylo chews his lips again while he watches her exaggeratedly suckle on his fingers.

Perhaps Rey thinks she gets some sort of petty revenge on him by doing this. If that is her plan, Kylo does not think it works to her advantage. His blood is hot and his heart is pounding. Even when she bites him—little, controlled nips rather than the bloodthirsty chomp he had planned on giving her neck—he only feels awash with pleasure. So much so that he does not notice her hand slip from where it holds her blankets in place to his belt until she is holding the fruit knife to his throat.

Before he can do much more than register the threat, she uses the hand she had held onto his wrist with to shove him down on his back with a surprising amount of strength, no doubt aided in part by the Force. He fully expects her to kill him, then, or at least bargain for a way to get freed.

Instead, Rey reaches for the food he had unpacked earlier. The clothes continue to go ignored. Kylo savors the few seconds of staring at her petite breasts and almond brown nipples before she covers them up again. She sits down on his stomach, the blanket and his robes not quite thick enough to disguise the press of her vulva and petite rump. He stays still in an effort not to give away that the Force she had exuded on him did not result in something as carefully concentrated as a Force freeze.

Rey holds a piece of mealbread to his mouth and demands he open it. Out of surprise more than compliance, Kylo does. The end result is the same: she shoves a hunk of bread inside and then jams his lower jaw up to close his mouth around it. He chews and swallows at her stern urging, then has another piece jammed in his mouth. The same follows for the next piece. And then the next. Once the two small loaves are gone, she grabs some meat, not bothering to make them bite sized but shoving multiple large pieces at once into his mouth.

It does not take long for him to grasp what she is doing. Much in the same way she had read his mind right back as he tried to interrogate her, she is now force-feeding him so he knows how she felt. And, also similarly, she is being a lot rougher with him than he had been with her during the process. She is giving him too much too quickly.

More than once, he chokes. Rey always halts whenever this happens, staring down at him with what he would like to believe is concern. She smooths her fingers over his throat and helps him swallow, though she always contradicts the tender motion with a small increase in her grip. No doubt he will have bruises on the skin of his pale neck to match hers. Kylo's stomach begins to ache after a short time between being stuffed full, his tight belt, and Rey's pelvis bearing down on it. He had stints of undereating, reasoning that the constant hollow pain would aid him in his pursuit of the dark side. Rey happened to catch him right in the middle of one of his fasts, making the amount of food seem insurmountable.

And then, suddenly, it is all gone. All save for the container of the drugged gruel. The look Rey gives him is scathing. She drops the knife when she goes to grab it. Kylo fails to take advantage of this opportunity for attack for reasons he will not be able to explain to his master later. He bites Rey, just a little, when she prizes his jaw open, so he can at least say he resisted. He gives up completely when she starts to pour the gruel in. It is even more chalky and thick than numian cream, sticking to his tongue and the back of his throat. He hacks and coughs up some of it.

"I bet that you're regretting what you've done right about now," Rey says, no small amount of satisfaction in her voice.

Kylo, thoroughly chastened and starting to feel the effects of the drugs, turns his head to the side. Rey asks him how it feels and he can only muster up enough coherent thought to moan in response. A trickle of drool slips out of his mouth as his eyes glaze over.

How had she managed to stay coherent as long as she did when he gave her a double dosage? She must be even stronger than he gives her credit for if he cannot outlast her when it comes to both the Force and the suppressants.

The last thing he sees is her controlled, hard expression twitch a little into one that resembled something close to pity. Kylo's upsweep of anger is only tempered by his bout of unconsciousness.

When he wakes up, she is long gone, along with the small knife, clothes, and his access card. Kylo's reaction is to howl a slew of obscenities, then crawl partially off of the bed and empty the contents of his stomach. He dry-heaves for a long while, slamming his fist repeatedly into the bed. She had the courtesy to not only not kill him—a decision she would live to regret—but to also leave his capelet behind. He makes a point of ignoring it as he struggles to his feet.

Kylo dispels the stinging tang of vomit in his mouth with the few juicy seeds clinging to the inside of the fruit that had been discarded on the ground before exiting the prison cell. He hopes, viciously, that Rey;s choice to try to escape on an empty stomach will leave her weak and sick in spite of knowing that she is more than used to starving.


End file.
